I own a perfectly conventional analogue watch, and though I confess to a penchant for these weird or confusing digital ones, up to now I’d probably not buy one. But this leaked set of images is of a watch I’d actually consider wearing: the Eleeno Cyber. With 12 discrete LCD dials to read the time from, it’s almost more fashion bracelet than watch, and comes in silver or dark stainless steel finish with green or red LCDs. To work out how the displays work, there’s a guideline in the gallery: but you’ll have to decipher that first. Available in Russia for US$198 in July, but apparently Tokyo Flash have carried this brand before. [Technabob]
Adding to the rumours we brought you a few months ago, the Sankei Shimbun daily newspaper is reporting that Panasonic is planning on having 37-inch OLED screens on sale within three years. And there’s more: they’ll be setting up a production line in the IPS Alpha Technology factory in Chiba Prefecture, intend to overtake their rivals in the next-gen display tech, and will sell the TVs for US$1,390. Though Panasonic apparently denies having such detailed plans, it seems a plausible timescale to me. [OLEDdisplay.net]
It’s hard not to watch this video of DIY robot Readybot and think “sweet… what’s the next version like?” Looking like everyone’s favourite trashcan-shaped sci-fi droid has collided with a dishwasher, Readybot’s intended to be a home-assistant ‘bot doing a maid’s job, cleaning your house. It may be slow and primitive now, but it looks pretty adept at grabbing stuff from the floor. And deploying a Roomba to do the vacuuming is genius. Actually an on-going development by makers The Readybot Robot Challenge, the robot will get more sophisticated, and we’ll be watching for Phase 2 later this year. I’ll get excited when it can put my clothes away and clean the cat litter tray. [Readybot]
It’s been a long time coming, but the Australian iTunes Store is finally selling TV shows.
Apple’s on one hell of a roll at the moment. After last week’s massive Sydney Store opening, and another two and a half weeks before the iPhone launches, they’ve decided to plug the gap by offering both Australian and international TV programming on their iTunes Store.
Among the programs that you can purchase – episodes cost a reasonable $2.99 each – are local productions from Channel 9 and the ABC, plus international programming from The Disney Channel, MTV and ABC Studios.
The selection isn’t the greatest to start off with, especially for local content – there’s Summer Heights High, We can be Heroes, Double the Fist, Sleek Geeks, Surfing the Menu, and Foreign Correspondent Postcards from Aunty and Sea Patrol, Canal Road, MacLeod’s Daughters and Urban Magic from Channel 9. From ABC Studios, you’ve got Scrubs, Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. Plus there’s South Park Season 10.
HTC today announced the Australian release of the HTC Touch Diamond. The phone, which Chen seems to think is a little bit slow from his early hands-on, will be launched either late July or early August on Telstra.
The phone will cost $999 outright or free on an $80 plan. It’s also quite customised for the Telstra network, with inbuilt Sensis mapping, Trading Post and search functionality. It also features a 7.2Mbps HSPA chipset inside, which takes advantage of Telstra’s fast NextG network. CEO Peter Chou even admitted that it was the fastest phone they’d ever produced.
Telstra have got the Diamond exclusively for three months, although there’s no word on who’ll pick it up after that. I also managed to catch a glimpse of the Touch Pro version with a slide-out qwerty keypad, and although they were quiet on specifics, it’s looking at a Q4 launch down here.
I also managed to score some one-on-one time with CEO Peter Chou, which I’ll be sorting through over the next couple of days. Stay tuned for more…
[HTC]
newVideoPlayer("/legovault_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); I have to confess that life hasn’t been very good lately. Work around the clock, not enough free time, trying to have kids and crashing badly… all while moving to a country I don’t particularly like, away from my best friends and family. Maybe that’s why visiting Lego’s Memory Lane–the secret vault guarding almost every Lego set ever manufactured–touched me in a way I didn’t expect. This wasn’t amazement or simple awe. I was already astonished to no end by the tour of the Lego factory. No, this was something else, something bigger than the impressive view of the 4,720 Lego sets inside this lair. These weren’t just simple boxes full of bricks. These were tickets to ride a time portal to emotions and simpler days long forgotten.
Adrienne So over at Slate has used her natural gifts to come up with the most genius idea yet: an energy-generating bra. Instead of just holding her boobs in place and dispelling that excess kinetic energy into, I don’t know, heat, why not use it to power a gadget? According to a breast specialist, a D-cup in a lousy bra moves up to 35-inches up and down during exercise. Professor Wang of Georgia Tech is working on just this problem, using nanowires inside fabric to convert that visual spectacle into something useful. But is it enough to power an average iPod? This Wang says yes. [Slate]
Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and consider exactly why you don’t do so many of the things that you don’t do. (That’s why I don’t tie my nipples to doorknobs! Of course!) This is a useful exercise that the guy behind Portable Gaming Solutions has apparently never tried. As a result, he is offering to convert your perfectly functional Xbox 360 into a strange-looking laptop for more than the cost of the original console.
HD DVD was declared dead a long time ago, and the last film to be released to the US on the format will hit (roughly three to five) shelves tomorrow. Disco Pigs was originally released in 2001 and very appropriately stars Cillian Murphy and Elaine Cassidy as friends who were born in the same hospital, at the same time, and who grew up next to one another. Unfortunately, as they reach adulthood it is apparent that their relationship has become dangerously volatile. It doesn’t end well. (Spoiler alert: Cillian Murphy’s character is the HD DVD.) [Crave]
It’s well known that the biggest bump in the road to developing an awesome all-electric car is the battery. The only ones juicy enough are a) big b) expensive and c) not so durable. Not easy. But science is no match for the American spirit! If elected, John McCain is promising US$300 million to whoever develops a next-gen battery that “has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.” Totally coincidentally, that same battery will also power the next generation of life-extending cybernetic cryo-suits. [Detroit News via Jalopnik]
